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About
Board of Directors

The WINGS Board is comprised of explorers, writers, business people, and artists.

  • Ellen Williams Chairman
  • Joan Lanius-Nichol Treasurer

  • Virginia Lynch Dean
  • Susan Lyall
  • Milbry C. Polk, Founder and WINGS Fellow
  • Angela Schuster, WINGS Director Ex-officio
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Who We Are

 

Milbry C Polk
Founder

A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Polk is the author of 10 books including award winning Egyptian Mummies (Dutton Penguin, 1998), co -author with Mary Tiegreen Women of Discovery (Clarkson Potter, 2001) and co-editor with Angela Schuster The Looting of the Iraq Museum (2005 Abrams) and is a contributing editor to The Explorers Journal. She lectures frequently and serves on the boards of museums, theater, news and arts organizations. Her photographs have been exhibited widely and she has been published in numerous magazines. Her own explorations have been in the Middle East and Asia ( North Africa, Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Laos, Burma) and more recently in the Arctic and Tibet. Her work focuses on Wings WorldQuest, a nonprofit organization she founded with Leila Hadley Luce to support the work of women explorers. She is creating educational programs to engage young people in science and exploration. Her profile on CBS Sunday Morning “They also Dared’ won a Gracie Award. Her other awards include Leader of the 21st Century from Womens Enews; Environmental Award from Unity College. Polk graduated from the Madeira School and Harvard College. She lectures frequently.


Angela M.H. Schuster

Director, WINGS basecamp operations

Angela M.H. Schuster has spent the better part of two decades serving as an editorial bridge between the scientific and exploration community and the public. As a reporter for Archaeology magazine; the Milanese daily, Corriere della Sera; and The New York Times, she has covered advances in knowledge first-hand. As an editor for Archaeology, ICON, and The Explorers Journal, she has helped those sharing accounts of their own research and discovery tell their stories more effectively. In addition to her responsibilities as director of WINGS basecamp operations, she is editor-in-chief of The Explorers Journal, a contributing editor to Archaeology magazine, a contributor to The New York Times, and co-editor, with Milbry Polk, of The Looting of the Iraq Museum Baghdad: Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia (Harry N. Abrams, 2005). 

 

Susan Colacello
Director, Programming and Education; Website

Susan Colacello joined WINGS in 2007 to launch the organization’s public and youth-based programs. She has 20 years experience developing, funding and implementing education programs for non-profit and public service organizations. She worked as an Artist in Residence, bringing documentary filmmaking to kids in New York public schools and hospitals and taught courses in using video technology in the classroom and media literacy at the New School and through the Educational Video Center in NY.  At the Rubin Museum of Art, she helped launch their education program as well as funding and building the NEH sponsored website, www.exploreart.org. She also served as Education Director for the Foreign Policy Association, managing the national “Great Decisions” discussion group program and a national team of master teachers to create the “Global Citizen Project,” a global education curriculum built around youth town meetings.